


saw you come back to me

by violentdarlings



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, F/M, Houses of Healing, badass Éowyn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 19:49:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17587265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: They speak of it only once, in all the years.





	saw you come back to me

“I remember being dead,” Éowyn says, long after Aragorn has almost forgotten he brought her back from the brink, with _athelas_ and pure water and hope, burning his breast like the last candle against the night, burning through him all the way to his roughened hands.

“You were not dead,” he answers in spite of himself. It is not so odd for the King and the steward’s lady to be sitting in the gardens of Minas Tirith. For all Faramir overseas what goes on in the White City amongst men, there is a secret underworld that neither Faramir nor Aragorn himself can penetrate. The women of Minas Tirith do not always trust their menfolk, or those who rule them; Aragorn is chipping away at decades of mistrust, little by little, but it takes time, and the women of the City from, from highborn to low, have elected to trust Éowyn with their secrets and their troubles.

She meets with them regularly, often enough that Faramir dines with Aragorn and Arwen one or two nights a week, while his lady is out gathering secrets. Aragorn knows from long experience that his steward does not mind, is proud, even, of how accepted Éowyn is by the ladies of the City.

In the beginning, Aragorn thought perhaps Arwen might be so accepted, but –

But the strong women of the West do not always warm to an Elf-Queen from further away than most will ever travel in their lifetime. They respect her, of course, and Aragorn often detects a sort of distant fondness, even, but no more. Éowyn is safer to them, and yet not; for all the times she is dressed in diaphanous white with her wheat-gold hair flowing, the calm voice of the sick room and the gentle hands of a healer, she dons mail and leads patrols, regardless of any voice telling her not to. Many times Aragorn has watched his soldiers return from battling orcs or raiders, led by a fair-haired rider splattered with black orc blood or viscera, and craved himself the simplicity of battle. It has taken years for him to feel even a little at ease without a sword in his hand, a dagger underneath his pillow.

He was a Ranger too long.

“I was in the place which is Other,” Éowyn replies, very determinedly not looking at him. something in the hedge has caught her eye, or at least she would have him believe. “Where there was not so much Darkness as an absence of Light.”

“You strayed almost too far,” Aragorn acknowledges. “You did not come back to this world willingly.”

Her eyes are that unusual shade of blue, clearer than the sky, and she pierces him with them. “Why would any want to dwell in that forsaken place?” she asks, but Aragorn also notices that she does not deny his words.

“Perhaps you were looking for someone,” he suggests, and Eowyn’s mouth tightens at the corners. She wears her grief for her uncle still, like she wears mail and helm; with pride, and with vengeance.

“All the same,” she says, and Aragorn does not argue further, allows her to leave the past where it lies, “I remember it. You brought me back.”

“And you have repaid my gift a hundredfold,” he reminds her gently. “Why dwell on what has past?” Obscurely, he is reminded of Eowyn as she was last year; seven months gone with child and astride a horse, blowing a kiss at Faramir as she galloped out the gates of the keep. For all the time he’s known her, Aragorn always manages to forget that Éowyn is truly a wild thing, and that they have trammelled her only with her blessing. But he remembers, when she rides, almost one with her horse. He remembers her telling him she’d been on horseback before she’d been able to walk. The Rohirrim live, and die, by their horses.

(Arwen had disapproved, of Eowyn riding while pregnant. “Do you not worry she will be injured?” she’d fretted, and a brief shadow had crossed Faramir’s face.

“she tells me the women of Rohan ride until the day the child comes,” he’d replied, and that had been that, but all the same it had been Éowyn’s last ride before she birthed Morwyn, a sweet, ruddy-haired babe with lungs of leather that belied her dainty appearance.)

Aragorn can hear her now.

Éowyn smiles. It changes her face, brings humanity to it. Without humour she reminds him terribly of when they first met, the pale figure that haunted Meduseld while Rohan languished under the eye of Saruman. “If anyone had told me what effort children are before I’d had one –”

“You would have had her anyway,” Aragorn replies, and Eowyn laughs.

“Of course, my lord,” she agrees, and rises, bows like a man (because, Aragorn thinks, sometimes she forgets she is not), and takes her leave when he nods. As always, when he sees her walking away, there is something like a longing sorrow, like grief for a time long lost, or an ache in a place somewhere tight in his chest.

Every day Aragorn shares with Arwen is like an affirmation, that all horrors have an end, and he adores her, as he has from the first. But oh, a life spent with Éowyn, loving a woman who takes her responsibilities and makes joy of them, the better to remain free. Aragorn knows now he is not great enough for that, that he never had space in his heart for another woman after he met Arwen, that his star was fixed to hers long ago.

But a Shield-maiden who is a mother and a healer is a rare thing, and the sorrow lingers.


End file.
